Useful for historical trending

Now that the Christmas craziness is officially over and companies are continuing to plan for 2011, I think it’s an important time to recommend Google’s very useful Insights for Search tool to improve knowledge on how search is being used throughout the year.

This tool shows the trends on Google searches for your chosen timeline in a geographic area, country, group of countries or worldwide. For example, a search for “the ashes” for the last 90 days shows unsurprising peaks from mid November:
 

Additionally, the tool lets us see the regional interest of the search:

And finally related search terms and rising searches within that timeline:

Useful for understanding PPC campaign changes

I found it very useful recently when analysing performance on a campaign that is highly affected by weather changes in the UK. I wanted to back up my assumption that the change in site performance in January year-on-year was largely affected by the first big snowfall of the year. Across the board, search popularity for the top keywords in that campaign had peaks in January 2010 when the UK had the biggest snowfall for years, and November & December 2010 when we saw the biggest amount of snow this winter, dropping back to more normal levels in January when we’ve seen a break from the snow!

Some interesting examples of searches affected by snowfall:

“kids ski gloves” to ensure the little ones are bundled up on their walk to school:
 

“wellington boots” for looking stylish and avoiding an embarrassing slip or fall on the icy pavement:

Even frustrated commuters looking for a “train ticket refund” after days of cancellations:

Useful for... anything!

The uses for insights for search are virtually endless – whether used for campaign research or just a reminder of how times change...

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